There is a new point release of WordPress available along with a brand new theme. I normally run updates and test new themes on a staging site, before updating live sites, but it was a rainy Sunday so I just dropped it straight on here and this is the result!
The recent default WordPress themes have seen a trend towards minimalism, with themes that are optimized for readability. The last two themes have added extensive support for the WordPress block editor. Out of the box, they offer enough functionality to provide a good looking website with a minimum of tweaking, but have the flexibility for advanced customization. Or in the words of the developers, they offer a blank canvas.
WordPress 5.6 has been released
The first thing to do with any new theme is to create a child theme. Themes, particularly new ones, are regularly updated and if you don’t create a child theme, you run the risk that a theme update will overwrite any customizations that you might have painstakingly implemented.
The new Twenty TwentyOne theme looks good without any tweaking. It has good looking typography and it supports dark mode.
It has deleted the company logo and I see from the specifications that the logo dimensions have changed. Twenty twenty required a 300 x 300 pixel logo, whereas twenty twentyone needs a 300 x 100 pixel one. The new theme supports dark mode so it will also be important to ensure that any logo works against both a light and dark background!
It has also capitalized the company name for some reason and there’s a lot of white space at the bottom of the page. The page titles are in a rather large font but I think it might be worth sticking with. I’ll take a deep dive into it when I have more time.
UPDATE: Perfomance of the updated website was shocking. It took over a minute for the main page of the website to load! As a result, the whole website has been reinstalled and the php version updated. Load times are back to normal. If you notice any issues please get in touch.